Nigerian and Ghanan scammers are on a roll. They have moved on from trying to get you to transfer money to their account and in turn they’ll send you a large check and so on, to not only stealing money, but ripping apart hearts. These so-called “Romance Scams” are rampant and I have been a victim. I haven’t succumbed to a Romance Scam though.

Remember when we used to blog everything about our families and places we visit prior to Facebook? Well, back then I blogged about my kids and what I was up to. I did this mostly for my family. As time wore on, I migrated to Facebook and began locking down my pictures and posts. Why? Because I started getting calls from women in Europe who said they were being romanced by me. Of course I had no idea what they were talking about. One gentle Englishwoman told me the entire story about how she saw pictures of “me” on a dating site and began conversing with “me”. It wasn’t me. It was a Romance Scammer from Ghana.

At the time I wrote up a post like this. It was simple, I am the real Dan Mosqueda. I’m married. I’m not on dating web sites. I won’t ask you for money or laptops or cell phones. I’m not deployed to Afghanistan having left my child back in Ghana.

Nothing has changed. I’m still not deployed. I have no children in Ghana who need an emergency surgery or airline tickets or anything. Do not send scammers money. It’s your money, not theirs. And now they’re on Facebook to try and gain credibility. You can’t see my Facebook page.

So here are a list of email addresses you might find them using along with names they might use. It’s not always Dan, but the pictures are the same. They’ll be pictures of me, my sons at various locations looking cute and cuddly.

AlexMosqueda70@yahoo.com

Mosquedaalex16@yahoo.com

alexxaviermosqueda70@yahoo.com

p.jnr_mosqueda@yahoo.com

paulmosqueda60@yahoo.com

mosquedaalex11@yahoo.com

They’ll ask you to send money and items to a church or other location in care of a friend. In many cases “my” friend in Ghana is Alhassan Mustapha. Mr. Mustapha will retrieve the money and items from the Tesano Baptist Church where he will claim to be a faithful member.

A little research reveals the Post Office in Accra, Ghana near the church is also near the area where the real Alhassan Mustapha lives. I have no proof of this, but I imagine Mustapha has people inside the Post Office intercepting his mail and he shares the loot.

It might not be “Daniel Mosqueda” or Paul or Alex. It could be Jim Smith or Tobias McLaughlin. The moral of the story is to avoid dating sites that aren’t large enough to fight off the proliferation of these scammers. The next thing to learn: DON’T SEND MONEY TO ANYONE YOU DON’T ALREADY KNOW.

Do an internet search on the name of the person romancing and be diligent. There are sites like Pig Busters where you can find information. Here’s a page on Mr. Mustapha: